During summer, I start getting this frying pan noise that seems to be a combination of things - increased noise from local high tension power towers, but also - just what I have heard is called "High Angle Noise".

This noise starts out low before sunrise, and gets louder during the day - and wanes after sunset.

Here's where I don't think its just the power towers. Right now, on 15M, if I use my 55' hatted vertical, the noise is S1 - or less. When I switch to any horizontal antenna, the noise is S5. Later in the afternoon - the noise builds to S9, and that's when I end up hearing only the loudest DX signals punch through. The NB and NR on the K3 and TS-590s both help a lot, but its still a PITA.

Back when Annobon was activated in the early 2000's - I remember there was a solar flare during one of their massive pileups and my horizontal antenna was swamped with frying pan noise.

Knowing that my silly little Force-12 Sigma 5 had "T Bars" that rejected high angle noise, I switched to it and made the Q. They sounded like a faint signal in a tin can on the Sigma-5, but I broke a massive pileup running 600 watts or so to this "no gain" 11' vertical.

For the last 2 months my 20M has been annoyingly noisy. I need to turn it just off of North to get a quite zone. It's very particular which is VERY odd. For the last 1.5 years I've never had this problem. Today, I'm taking the Hexbeam down to put new wires on it, replace the coax and center post of hexbeam where wires connect, raising it another 10ft and painting it black again.

I'm wondering if that will help or if I have small interference nearby (doubt) because turning it South should do the same thing as North if the noise was coming off the ends to the East or West..

Or is this just something that happens during this time of the year.

It's not a lot of noise (S3 or so) but I'm usually S1 and it makes a difference. Never had to rotate like that before.

My boys and I redid my K4KIO Hexbeam with new wires, center post (coax connector), new LMR400 coax, new pipe, new paint and it's up another 10ft to about 24ft off the flat roof and 220ft+ off the ocean to the East, South and West. Only 24ft to the N etc.

Looks like my noise level is down. It might have been the wire connection to center coax post (salt spray etc.)

My Amp and Tuner settings are off now. Need to redo my cheat sheet. I bet the SWR is lower. Need to check all that now.

Problem - it's totally visible from the street below - much more so than expected. I was thinking just the top half would show... not the bottom and pole. The whole thing is showing and about 5 feet of pole. I'll probably remove about 6-7ft in a few weeks. It's kinda sketchy at that height. If you only see the top 2/3 of the hex you don't notice it or know what it is... once you get it all in view - it's like.. what the??

I used 1.9" galvanized fence post anchored with three large bolts to CMU block of house. I then used the same pipe size and attached it to the side of the anchored pipe to make a swivel pipe to make mounting easier (tilting).. using a large stainless bolt at the anchor point and another one for the bottom lock-down. Then used electrical pipe that is just the right size to fit inside that fence post. Using two 10' sections of pipe with another 6' smaller pipe to make the joint on the inside with 3' overlap and bolted on both sides. Guy ropes in 3 spots about 2/3 up. Whole thing is probably about 80lbs (hex, rotor, pipe) but straight up it feels like 2-3 times that.

My directional noise is gone on 20M. The noise is lighter (S1 or less now - S2-3 with Pre-Amp) and I don't need to turn towards the N to get the noise level down. For something like that - I'm thinking it might have had something to do with Coax cable loop into Base and rotator? I read that you should use stranded coax not solid (which) I was using - because of the constant movement near rotator. The new LMR400 from DX Engineering isn't as stiff as the other LMR400 I had.

I think I'll strip that down and take a look. I had put electrical tape around that area that goes into the baseplate to protect it etc.

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